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Finicky Bluetooth mouse? Check your rechargeables

Question: My Apple Magic Mouse seems to have woken up dead, and replacing the batteries with some topped-off rechargables didn't help. Am I now in the market for a new mouse? Answer. This was me Wednesday

Question: My Apple Magic Mouse seems to have woken up dead, and replacing the batteries with some topped-off rechargables didn't help. Am I now in the market for a new mouse?

Answer. This was me Wednesday morning, when the Bluetooth-linked input device I've been using since late 2009 appeared inert, then failed to wake itself after I popped in a set of rechargeable AAs fresh out of the charger.

Once I'd dusted off a spare Bluetooth mouse (pairing it with my iMac using only keyboard shortcuts was not remotely fun), I looked up what might be amiss. I didn't think it was a mechanical failure: To crush or dent the circuit boards inside the Magic Mouse, you'd have to do some obvious damage to its aluminum shell.

But a long discussion thread on Apple's tech-support site pointed to two other points of failure. One is the electrical contacts inside this rodent, another is the positive and negative terminals on each AA battery.

The contacts already looked clean, and swabbing with a Q-tip dipped in rubbing alcohol made no difference. That second set of rechargeables, however, appeared slightly tarnished. Scrubbing them still didn't help, so I finally opened a new pack of disposable AAs, popped them in and finally saw the Magic Mouse's underside LED light up.

To compound the mystery, a newer set of rechargeable batteries also worked fine in the mouse. The problematic pair also functioned properly in my spare mouse — and when I tried putting them back in the Magic Mouse a few hours later, that rodent no longer had any issue with them.

A wired mouse wouldn't be as easy to switch from one side of the keyboard to the other (my sole sign of ambidextrousness is my ability to work a mouse left-handed as well as I can right-handed, an ability that's allowed me to balance out wear on my wrists. It would also tie up another USB port on my desktop. But a wired mouse would just work.

Most places will tell you that since a 1996 law helped greatly reduce mercury in disposable alkaline batteries, it's fine to toss them in the trash (California is a notable exception). But doing the same with rechargeable batteries is universally frowned upon: The latter, as the average city or county trash and recycling site will note, include materials that aren't safe in a landfill, valuable to recycle, or both.

Many of those sites will endorse taking your dead rechargeables to the local hazardous-waste drop-off site or another government office. But you've probably got a much more convenient option: Call2Recycle, a site backed by battery manufacturers, lets you look up shops near an address or Zip code that accept rechargables for recyling. In the Washington area, for example, it listed a round of Apple Stores and Radio Shack outlets, plus a few Home Depots and neighborhood hardware stores.